Design and simulation tools for optical microresonators

Abstract

Dielectric resonators promise high functionality components for future optoelectronic integrated circuit applications. Accurate modelling of these components is a prerequisite to their successful deployment in innovative configurations. This paper will compare and contrast a wide variety of simulation techniques, developed by ourselves, that can be used for design. These encompass, (1) full wave analytical integral equation methods which yield high accuracy and fast computation but are structure specific, (2) direct numerical simulation based upon high performance finite difference schemes which offer significant flexibility at the cost of computational overheads, (3) fast yet accurate semi-analytical approaches which can often provide sufficiently accurate results for the purposes of practical design at a fraction of the effort, in terms of both computational and pre-processing analysis as required by the former methods.The relative merits of the methods will be illustrated through their application to the design of practical components for a variety of systems. These will include examining the resonant frequencies, the quality factors and the field profiles of the lower order modes and the whispering gallery modes of dielectric resonators. Specific applications of interest are in the fields of filters, coupling elements and lasers.

One-dimensional finite-elements method for the analysis of whispering gallery microresonators

“…For the analysis of these structures, both full-wave and semi-analytical methods can be employed and their performance can be investigated [4].…”

“…The main disadvantage of the full-wave methods such as the finite-elements method (FEM) and finite-difference (FDTD) time domain is that these methods require a considerable amount of computational resources [4][5][6][7]. Moreover, the meshing scheme used in these methods introduces dispersion and radiation loss into the problem [8,9].…”